A Book of Middle English. J. A. Burrow
. and pátrounes bicóme
Wélneʒe of al þe wéle. in þe wést íles (9/6–7)
A dip of one syllable may be called ‘weak’, and ‘strong’ if it is more than one syllable. In the second half‐line (the ‘b‐verse’) the rhythm is quite tightly controlled, with a maximum of eight syllables and a minimum of four. Furthermore, one of the dips preceding the two lifts must be strong, the other must not be strong. So in the b‐verse of l. 6 above, the first dip (‘and’) is weak, the second is strong; in l. 7 the first stress (‘west’) is preceded by a strong dip, and followed immediately without a dip by the final stressed syllable. If there is a dip at the end of the line it is always weak. For a fuller account, see H. N. Duggan in Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, eds, A Companion to the Gawain‐Poet (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 221–42.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from which all these examples have been taken, a varying number of alliterative lines is rounded off by a rhyming ‘bob and wheel’ of five lines, the ‘bob’ of one stress and the four lines of the ‘wheel’ of three stresses.
The basic description of the alliterative line applies also to the verse of Piers Plowman, but the variations in Langland’s line are considerably greater than those in the Gawain‐poet and the other writers of the North‐West. One very characteristic feature of Langland’s verse is the alliteration of an unstressed syllable before a non‐alliterating stressed syllable. So in this second half‐line, fro alliterates but morw‐ is stressed:
And flápton on with fláles . fro mórwen til éven (7b/180)
Variant alliterative patterns, in particular aaa/xx and aa/xa, are found quite frequently in Piers Plowman and are perhaps authentic, but scribal intervention in this text is a major problem, and many of the metrical anomalies may be a result of corruption.
6.4 Laʒamon’s Brut
Laʒamon, writing in about 1200, used both rhyme and alliteration, sometimes as alternatives, sometimes together. He seems to have relied on two distinct models: the stress‐based alliterative line of Germanic tradition, and the rhyming couplets of Romance verse. The alliterative line was inherited from Old English, but perhaps not directly; there are examples even from before the Conquest of a much looser alliterative line with sporadic internal rhyme. On this model Laʒamon superimposed a metre learnt from Anglo‐Norman and Latin poets writing rhyming verse. In Laʒamon’s Brut the half‐lines are of varying length, predominantly of two stresses, and are linked to one another sometimes by rhyme or half‐rhyme, sometimes by alliteration, sometimes by both. With rhyme but not alliteration is:
Híʒenliche swíðe . fórð he gon líðe (3/4)
The next line has alliteration but not rhyme:
þat he bíhalves Báðe . béh to ane vélde (3/5)
Two lines further on, the word burnen both alliterates and rhymes with the second half‐line:
And ón mid heore búrnen . béornes stúrne (3/7)
In his work Laʒamon was recreating a heroic British past for an Anglo‐Norman present, and his metrical form, like other features of his style, recalls pre‐Conquest traditions. Yet his Brut does not attempt to reproduce an Anglo‐Saxon verse form, but instead develops English verse by assimilating Continental traditions.
7 From Manuscript to Printed Text
The following is a passage from one of our texts (11), St Erkenwald lines 257–64: first, as it appears in the one surviving manuscript copy; then, as it would appear in a ‘diplomatic’ or letter‐by‐letter transcription; and finally, as it appears in our edited version.
Lines from St Erkenwald (MS Harley 2250, folio 74v).
Reproduced by permission of the British Library.
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ye bisshop baythes h |
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be, c |
yagh mē menskid h |
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yt his clothes we |
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hom burde haue rotid & bene rent |
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| ∵ | yi body may be enbawmyd hit bashis me noght |
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yt hit thar ryne ne ro |
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bot yi colou |
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how hit myʒt lye by mōnes lo |
þe bisshop baythes hym ʒet with bale at his hert,
þagh men menskid him so, how hit myʒt worthe
þat his clothes were so clene. ‘In cloutes, me thynkes,
Hom burde have rotid and bene rent in rattes long sythen. 260
þi body may be enbawmyd, hit bashis me noght
þat hit thar ryne no rote ne no ronke wormes;
Bot þi coloure ne þi clothe – I know in no wise
How hit myʒt lye by monnes lore and last so longe.’
We ignore the early‐modern hand which has marked worthe and rattes with underlining, and glossed the former (correctly) ‘be, com to pas’, although such annotations have their own interest as testifying to post‐medieval study of Middle English texts. The original is written in a late fifteenth‐century hand. As was common at the time, the scribe uses a y shape for both y and þ, but we distinguish them: þe for ye (257),